Why did I buy this book? What was I expecting? Having dragged my way through the seven hundred page tome chronicling the rise of ESPN to the cultural dominance that it enjoys today as well as the extensive backstage shenanigans that went along with it, I'm still not entirely sure.
The book seems to be billed as an oral history of sorts with plenty of ESPN insiders stepping forward to offer insight, tell stories and weave a fascinating chronicle of a network that really and truly helped give birth to the age of basic cable. From it's beginnings as a humble experiment backed by (randomly) Getty Oil Money in 1979, Shales and Miller do a great job of showing us the early struggles and fights ESPN had to go through to establish itself as profitable and entrench itself in the cable market. (ESPN fought for and eventually locked in the practice of charging cable companies subscription fees- something totally unheard of at the time but something that proved to be the foundation for ESPN's insane amount of profitability that continues to this day.)
The first chunk of the book was pretty boring, to be honest. I'm not a journalism student and while, I suppose, the ins and outs of media management and a debate over who actually founded ESPN (something that seemed to come up randomly now and again for far too long) bored me, to be totally honest. I was hoping for more stories from the reporters who covered the big sporting events from the early 80s but those didn't really start coming until they got around to the 90s and ESPN's breakthrough with the 1987 America's Cup.
Yachting. Yes, yachting was a big hit for ESPN, I guess. After that things get exciting for a bit before dipping back down to the middling. Controversies about Keith Olberman and Dan Patrick and the launch of ESPN2 are interesting enough, I guess but again, sort of boring. By this point in the book, I was tired of hearing about ESPN's Rise To World Dominance, instead, I wanted to get together with Fox and NBC and launch a coup, Julius Ceaser style and go Brutus on ESPN just to get this damn book over with.
I'll admit, reluctantly that things did get a little towards the end. Tony Kornheiser brings some good stories to the narrative and the struggles over Monday Night Football were fascinating (because I was totally oblivious to them at the time, though it sort of makes sense now. Sunday Night Football seems to be billed as 'the bigger event.') They also go into some pretty interesting details of the Erin Andrews stalking scandal as well as the many things said by a variety of ESPN stars (Kornheiser, Stephen A, Simmons, etc) that have gotten them suspended over the years.
Overall: Apparently, I'm not as big of an ESPN fan as I thought I was because, to be honest, this book was kind of boring. There's a vague sense of hagiography about it- especially with the whole 'Doing X, Y And Z: Step 10 in ESPN's Rise To World Dominance.' I remain unconvinced about that- ESPN's East Coast bias has been discussed plenty and they give the SEC far too much love for my personal liking (though, I'll admit you can't argue with results) but I'd say unless you're a serious ESPN nut, don't bother reading this book. And since I increasingly find myself watching Dan Patrick on the NBC Sports Network in the morning, I'm going to call this ** 1/2 out of **** and say that Shales and Miller did an impressive job assembling these interviews but they jump around a lot and a lot of it really isn't that interesting-at least to me.
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